Designing and living Experiences

I have been living in England for over a year, I came here to study my MA in Events and Exhibition Management at BCU and during my course I helped as volunteer in all the events that I could, trying to get as much experience as possible and to see what the industry could teach me. It has been an amazing experience and now I am more excited than ever of being at the end of the studies and becoming a pro, because I have been having the opportunity to combine the theory learning process with the practical process.

I have been working for the last 4 months in an event, but the excited about this that is not as a volunteer but as an event manager. Plus+ International Design Festival gave the opportunity of two of my friends Ayesha Kaur (India) and Gul Altuntac (Turkey) and me to be the event management team for the event, we thought that we were going to be involve just as interns, but no, the Plus+ directors Caroline Archer (UKType), Matt Clugston (Clusta), James Glover (Fluid), Alexandre Parre (Illuminate) and Lara Ratnaraja, thought that we are able enough to be in charge of the event and I have to say that until now, a week before the event we haven’t disappointed them.

Plus+ ‘is a unique design-led festival showcasing all that is innovative, pioneering, and novel in the world of international typo/graphic design’ and my role as an event manager have been responsible of all delegates management, sourcing and negotiating sponsorship, online communications; registration system setup and control, blogging, social networking and website maintenance (I have to say that I’m getting a pro in Facebook, twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc), exhibition layout and design, logistical coordination and onsite event management.

It has been an amazing opportunity to be able to put in practice all what I have been learning and my real est is going to come next week when the event is actually happening, I just hope everything goes well and all our effort can be shown at the festival and we can show the potential of three international event management students in England. So if you want to come and see the festival is going to be in Birmingham at Fazeley Studios, 191 Fazeley Street, Digbeth, B5 5SE. Will love to see you there and have the pleasureto meet you!

For those who knows me, can tell that the Heavy Metal and me have no a real connection. I consider myself a completely ignorant about the music and until a few months ago I didn’t know that bands like Napalm Death, Judas Priest or Godflesh exists, I knew that Black Sabbath exists just because of Ozzy Osbourne was filmed in a reality show in MTV. But life couldn’t let me keep existing on this planet without let me know about this and introduce with a heavy metal fans and let them teach me a little bit about them, how?

Well, in order to keep develop my learning process as an event manager, I have been working for two extraordinary people named Jenny Moore and Lisa Meyer and their music and arts promoter company named Capsule, they are from England and his company is based in Birmingham. They realised that the West Midlands and Birmingham were home of fantastic bands, but no one could make that connection. How many of you knew that Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Goldflesh started they careers in the West Midlands? Well, I didn’t (as I said before I didn’t know either that some of them exist), and in order to promote and give ownership to the place, Capsule decided to do something about it and create a project named Home of Metal and as they defined it:

Home of Metal aims to build an online archive that actively engages its audience in the creation and shape of the project. The project will start with a series of open days at the galleries inviting people to bring along memorabilia, photographs and great stories which will be digitized to help us create a digital archive of memories, images and pictures to tell the story of this unique moment of Midlands’ musical heritage. Allowing us to get a picture of what is out there and who might want to be involved.The bands we are focusing on are Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Godflesh all of whom have been innovators of the genre and in turn sub genres.

What interest me about this project is besides the organisation of the project is to see how people collects different types of items of their heroes and how they keep at home.